While most of the gaffes flew over my head, I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for this series’ Russian readers. The only reason I didn’t rate the first two books lower is because the world-building and setting of the story is relatively interesting, even though the author had caught flak for misappropriating Russian culture. It is a trilogy of books that confirms the worst suspicions of readers who don’t like YA because of how stereotypically YA it is.

And almost every single character in these books talks like a sarcastic teenager who thinks they are walking paragons of witticism.

There is a love triangle because it seems to me that every YA must have one of those these days. Her thought process mostly goes “he won’t like me/why would he like me/I think I am ugly even though I am still attractive in a skinny, waifish kind of way/wow, everyone else is hotter than me”. The protagonist, Alina Starkov, is the narrator (first person view of course) and we are constantly soaked in her indecision and insecurity. I gave the first two books in this trilogy a score of 2/5 because they almost read like parodies of YA romance.

Even though the TV series will bring in stuff from the Six of Crows duology (Ms Bardugo’s follow up books set in the Grishaverse), the story really began with these three books: The Shadow and Bone trilogy is Leigh Bardugo’s debut work and it had taken the YA fantasy world by storm and in a few short days, that stormfront will hit the mainstream when its highly anticipated Netflix adaptation premieres.

The grisha trilogy leigh bardugo